Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain. The mind does not create what it perceives, anymore than the eye creates the rose.

Sincerity is the highest complement you can pay

A friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold now the semblance of my being, in all its height, variety, and curiosity, reiterated in a foreign form; so that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly and desperately drunk with a certain belief.

Genius has infused itself into nature. It indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small balance in brute facts always favorable to the side of reason.

Our prayers are prophets.

I think all men know better than they do; know that the institutions we so volubly commend are go-carts and baubles; but they darenot trust their presentiments.